Self-assembly is the process by which a substance exclusively driven by non-covalent interactions spontaneously develops into a specific long-lived conformation with a well defined structure [1]}.
Self-assembling is common in natural bio-polymers, such as DNA, RNA and, in particular, proteins, that exhibit exceptional self-assembling properties. Proteins, the fundamental building blocks of every living organisms, have the remarkable property that their structure and, therefore, their function is encoded in the one-dimensional sequence of the structural elements that compose them. Although proteins vary strongly in size, structure and function, they are all composed of the same 20 fundamental chemical units called amino acids.
This protein alphabet insures an enormous variety of combinations, however only few sequences will have a well defined stable ground state, each of which consists of complex arrangements of predominantly three types of secondary structures: alpha helices, beta sheets and random coils [2]}, [3]}, [4]}. Hence, bio-polymers are a clear reference point for the development of artificial self-assembling systems based on modular subunits.
